Riley hopes normalcy next step for Heat

June 30, 2012|Ira Winderman, Sun Sentinel Columnist

MIAMI — Taking time this past week to sum up his team's championship season, Miami Heat President Pat Riley said he is hopeful the bid to repeat will produce different narratives than those endured these two years since LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh came together.

"I think what happened with winning, is it will, as I said, really sort of free up to a different storyline," Riley said, "that LeBron James is more than just a scorer; he's a winner. And we saw what he did in the playoffs and his performance.

"And Chris Bosh and Mike Miller and Shane Battier, and all these guys, now you don't have to talk about, 'Well, you never won one.' So let's free it up now and just be a team, and just be a team and not have to worry about that kind of thing.

"I'm sort of excited of just being able to hopefully go through something that's normal, that a great team would go through, and sort of growing."

But Riley also appreciates lessons need to be heeded.

He said that dark place his team inhabited before this ultimate jubilation should be remembered as vividly as the celebration following Game 5 of the NBA Finals.

"One of the things that you need to think about, all of us, after last year, how did we feel when we got beat by Dallas here?" he said in the postgame interview room at AmericanAirlines Arena. "You saw guys falling down in the hallway here, because of their disappointment and how discouraged they were.

"So whatever the players did last summer, I would advise them to try to go back to their caves and hibernate again. Or whoever they talked to, at least get back to that state of mind. And I think you learn so much as a team that's been to the Finals and you lose it and then you win it."

At a time some expected him to scale back, Riley said having a championship core in place takes him back to his days as Los Angeles Lakers coach, when Lakers General Manager Jerry West unceasingly maintained championship success.

"I was with a Laker team that had a 12-year run with a bunch of guys," Riley said. "Jerry West was adding pieces to it. [Bob] McAdoo was first, and then there was A.C. Green and Maurice Lucas, and then there was Mychal Thompson. And that's my job.

"My job is to keep trying to add pieces to it. I know we're in a different time now, but that's what I want to do. This is the beginning of time to build something that I think can be very unique."

The championship ultimately left Riley in a conflicted place, appreciating how close he was to already overseeing a two-time defending champion. Again, that's where his Lakers lineage entered.

"Last year was a major disappointment and maybe the best thing that ever happened to the team," he said. "But I never look at it that way. When you get a chance to win the title and you don't, it's an absolute, not failure, but it's not good and it doesn't help anybody. But born out of that adversity came this great year."

The last time the Heat won a championship, in 2006, the franchise careened, not to win another playoff series until 2011, falling to 15-67 along the way.

Riley doesn't envision a repeat, not with this group.

"I think they want to win so badly that any kind of real selfishness like that, that can get in the way of that, will be snuffed out quick," he said. "They're too smart. There's some real smart guys in that locker room that aren't going to let any of that stuff happen."

IN THE LANE

EVERYONE PLAYS: In addressing the lineup dynamic his team developed during the postseason, where the lane was cleared for LeBron James and Dwyane Wade by playing Chris Bosh at center and Shane Battier at power forward, Heat President Pat Riley in essence may have acknowledged the end of an era of the Heat featuring non-scorers in the lineup, such as Joel Anthony and his defensive-minded predecessors in the middle. "Small ball is becoming a big thing in the league," Riley said, "and I think it's going to become even bigger in how you can find space for your great players, with one big that can be an offensive-minded player that has to be guarded."